When we are back we will bring you reports of the food cart scenes of Portland and also a report from the factory of the newly crowned best cheddar cheese in the world.

The Eight Great Treasures of Chinese Cuisine

The project is very much on execution right now. The Eight Great Treasures of Chinese Cuisine (8GTCC for short) is a series of dinners organized by chowtimes focusing on the eight main Chinese cuisines.

Back in January, Suanne and I wanted to embark on an exploration in learning about the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese Cuisine. We are just intrigued by the differences between these distinct regional cuisines — we want to do a series on them over a period of time.

The Eight Great Traditions of Chinese Cuisine are defined as follows (with the 4 major ones marked with ***):

• Anhui
• Cantonese ***
• Fujian
• Hunan
• Jiangsu (Huaiyang) ***
• Shandong ***
• Sichuan ***
• Zhejiang

We would love to engage chowtimes readers in this journey with us. As you know, the traditional way to enjoy Chinese food is to have it banquet style. We are thinking of organizing something along these lines:

• We meet once a month on a Saturday. Each month, we will focus on one of the eight regional cuisine
• We will organize a few tables (ten to a table) with a multi-course dinner.
• A 8GTCC team members will research about the cuisine and share with everyone prior to the dinner
• We will learn about the region, the ingredients, the cooking techniques, famous dishes, the people, etc.

After all, I am of the opinion that Vancouver is home to the best authentic Chinese restaurants in North America. I think we can even go as far as saying Vancouver is home to the best authentic Chinese restaurants outside of China.

It will be a great time to learn, meet fellow foodies and most important of all, enjoy the best each of the regional cuisines has to offer. When I first brought this idea up, the response were overwhelming beyond my expectations. I received over 40 responses! Hang on first — don’t send me anymore requests. We will be announcing the details very shortly to announce the details.

This is a project that Suanne and I know we cannot do on our own. We have assembled a team of very capable volunteers. I had not discussed how much I can reveal who they are but I can tell you their pseudonyms. They are fmed, LotusRapper, Keev, DylanK, and Joe.

Last week, the team had a meeting and we have completed the plans on how we are moving forwards. And it is a great team too. I was awed by the collective body of knowledge and research capability we have in all these people. Gosh, if we really pushes it, this team could even write an authoritative book on the 8GTCC. I am not kidding. Just look at the comments generated by them over the last few days in chowtimes and you will see. I can’t wait for you all to meet the team. I think you will be amazed with them as I was.

For Suanne and I, we are in for the learning and is willing to let the use of chowtimes as a rallying point for everyone interested in learning the finer points of Chinese Cuisine. The first cuisine had been selected and the team is hammering away in producing a comprehensive write-up of that cuisine. Members of the team will take turns providing the leadership in each cuisine. The first one will be led by fmed who had done more than expected in compiling even the framework on the way forward.

This is going to be so exciting. I hope you all will find it so too and join us in this exploration.

A Couple Of Other Things

I met a most amazing chef last week. There were so much common energy between us that we generated quite a lot of ideas in doing some pretty innovative activities that we know will delight not only foodies out there but also those who enjoys cooking too. We will let the ideas incubate for a little longer but at the rate things are going, I am pretty excited about it that I just gotta say it out loud. Like the 8GTCC, we might need volunteers to help pull this off.

The other thing is my buddy, Rey, had some Kopi Luwak brought in. As you might know, Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world and get this … it is made from the droppings of the civet cat. LOL! The real Kopi Luwak costs up to $500 a pound but the one that Rey has is cheaper, way cheaper. He wants to share this with chowtimes readers but we don’t know …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Weekend Musings (20-Mar-2010) (124 words)

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At the rate things are going, I think with the help of Karl, I will be able to check out the Burnaby restaurants more.

It was Karl’s turn to make the choice. He suggested that we go to the next restaurant along Kingsway called Chill.

I exchanged several emails from Flora of Chill before when she invited Suanne and I to the restaurant. We said we will go one day but we never had the chance. So this would be a great time to go with Karl. Oh … I did not inform Flora ahead of my visit.

Chill is located next door to Pho Hoa (I think). I think at one point it is was a pub or something. I am not sure about this but there is something about this location. Feng Sui or what, not many people seems to gravitate to this place. Maybe it is on this short stretch of Kingsway that people step on the pedal when the road widens a little and hence this does not have the same visibility as the restaurants just 1-2 blocks up and down Kingsway from here.

Stepping into the restaurant, we find that the place looked much better than we thought. Neat clean lines with a decidedly Taiwanese style eatery. LOL! “Decidedly Taiwanese style eatery” refers to the black and red colors chosen in the same scheme of The One restaurant, Beefy Beef Noodles and Estea. See below …

The One Restaurant, Burnaby

Beefy Beef Noodle, Vancouver

Estea, Richmond

OK, I pretty much made this up. LOL! For some reason, I am beginning to associate red-black color scheme with Taiwanese restaurants. I thought it was kind of sleek.

The Chill is spacious. I really like the way the restaurant is setup. This is so unlike many Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant. There is the normal booth type seatings on one side, a separate bar area and most others are configurable tables with nice high back leather chairs.

Karl and I were seated at the tables located on a raised platform which we reckon doubles as a stage for night performances.

The place was pretty quiet when we were there. I am not surprised. Like I said, it’s something about this location. The whole time we were there there was only 3 tables taken up.

Oh … when Karl and I was there, workers from my company were there too. One of them came over to me and whispered that “lit dow geh yeh hoe larn sek geh” … “the food here is hard to eat”. He he he … Karl and I looked at each other and said … “then why is he here”. LOL!  For a moment we were thinking maybe the food here is not as good as the how it looked.

Chill does not appear to be like many of the Taiwanese restaurants around dishing out standard fare. They try to make themselves different while at the same time serving the popular Taiwanese dishes.

There are live performances on some nights and specials on certain days of the week. They like to call what they serve as tapas which kind of lend itself with the alcohol they also serve inhouse. It sounds to me that they want to make this like a “Taiwanese Cafe-slash-bubble-tea-house”  for the grown ups.

This is what I meant when I said “Taiwanese Cafe-slash-bubble-tea-house”.

This is the first time I had seen Alcoholic Bubble Tea. I really wanted to try this but I had to get back to work. I did not want go back and run a meeting looking like I am half-drunk since I turn red very easily.

How does “Brandy Milk Tea” sound? LOL!

So instead of getting the alcoholic drink, we asked our waitress for recommendations. I went with something called the Hawaiian Holiday ($5.25). It is the one on the right. The Hawaiian Holiday is a mix of banana, coconut and pineapple. Pretty good.

Karl’s choice is the one on the left. I can’t remember now what his is called — Lemon Plum I think.

Onto the food …

When I asked our waitress for a recommendation, she so enthusiastically recommended their Taiwanese Beef Noodles. Oh, I thought that it is quite bold seeing that they are just blocks away from Lao Shang Dong. I wanted to try that but Karl did not. Grrr … since I said I will leave all ordering to him this time, I let it go … I will come back some day to check that out.

The Kong Pow Chicken above is $6. It was quite flavourful. I like it but …
More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Chill Restaurant and Lounge on Kingsway Near Royal Oak, Burnaby (301 words)

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Post tags: Burnaby, Restaurant Review, Taiwanese

Like some of the restaurant businesses who reported a dip during the Olympics, chowtimes’ traffic too dropped by 10-15%. We are back to record setting territory again. I hope that the restaurant business is back to their normal levels too — particularly those on Denman and the Broadway corridor which I know were impacted.

Chowtimes Featured on EAT Magazine

It was December last year when Pam Durkin from the EAT magazine wrote to us with some questions for chowtimes. It was so long ago that I had completely forgotten about this until I was alerted recently of the write up on the magazine.

The EAT magazine is a Victoria based, province wide magazine that focuses on the culinary scene here in BC. It is not on sale but is distributed free and has over 100,000 readers province wide.

He he he … I don’t know that part about being a “self-proclaimed foodie” but nevertheless it was kind of cool seeing the chowtimes name on print. You can read the entire article on page 14 here.

Spring Break — Discovery of Portland’s Food Carts

Time sure flies this year isn’t it? We barely have much of a winter this year and now we are into spring already. No, I am NOT complaining.

Suanne and I were wondering if we wanted to do anything during the spring break.

Portland Food Carts (Credit seattlest.com)

We remember Charlene was telling us how amazed she was with the food carts in Portland. We had been to Portland before but that was pre-chowtimes days where we could not care less about food carts. Charles was saying that there are sites where there are something like 20 food carts.

THAT … sounds like the description of heaven to Suanne and I. Wow … that also sounds like a working holiday too. LOL!

Yeah … we are like 99.99% sure we are heading that way for our Spring Break.

But we don’t know much about the food carts in Portland. For those of you who had been there before, could you share a bit more about it with us. We would particularly like to have recommendation of the bigger sites, the must-try food, locations … any tips at all.

It is my dream that Vancouver one day will develop its own food cart culture.

Oh … Dine Around Seattle is happening throughout the month of March too. Dine Around Seattle is like our Dine Out Vancouver with prix-fixe dinner at $30. The timing could not have been more perfect!

Lots of Peppers!

Suanne had been a busy girl last week. Look at this!

I asked Suanne to help populate the Chowtimes Restaurant Explorer which is a rendition of a Google Map of the restaurants we had visited before. I told her to just take her own time and populate like 4-5 a day.

She went on to populate 40-50 a day! So now the Restaurant Explorer is looking all good. Suanne has still some way to go.

It goes without saying the densest area is Richmond.

Taste and Learn — Filipino Cuisine

By the time this is posted, 8 Chowtimes readers will be having lunch in Goto King with Rey, Suanne and I. Am looking forward to it … free food … and we get to learn a bit too. I wish we could accommodate more people (had to turn away some, sorry) but seating was limited.

I am just glad that we could host something like this. I know it is kind of unprecedented and people will be wondering what’s the catch. No catch! There are really people on this planet who loves food and is willing to share. We hope to do more things like this in future … not just eating, but learning too.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Eat well!

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. | Permalink | 14 comments
Post tags: Weekend Musings

I never knew that there are so much story behind the humble Banh Mi from Ba Le. I was only interested to see for myself the new expensive oven that Ba Le installed recently but in the process, I learn that a lot of people have so much to say/share about it.

Banh Mi Unstacked -- Illustration from the NYT

This makes me WANT to someday go to Saigon and eat at the original Ba Le and see for myself how the real Banh Mi is really like. As much as Vancouverites love our very own Banh Mi from Ba Le, I have a feeling that the folks in Vietnam will laugh at our own version. See what I mean below … LOL!